Labour LGBT Fundraising Table Quiz in aid of KAL Case

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice Wednesday March 15, 2006 11:37 by Lorca - Labour LGBT

Labour LGBT Fundraising Table Quiz in aid of KAL Case

Labour LGBT is organising a fundraising table quiz on Wednesday 15th March @ 8pm in the Front Lounge, Parnell St Dublin 2.

Tables will be 40 EUR for a table of 4

The funds raised on the night will go to the KAL Initiative (see www.kalcase.org ), an advocacy and fundraising group set up to assist Katherine Zappone and Anne-Louise Gilligan with their high court case to have their Canadian marriage recognised.

The quiz is being hosted by Neil Watkins

The case being brought by Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan is about fairness and equality for all members of this society – its fundamental emphasis is the respect of the rights of both married and non-married people to share their lives in an atmosphere of social and economic stability. Although their case calls for the State's recognition of their valid marriage abroad, the implications of such recognition is far-reaching for partnership legislation in Ireland.

Currently in Ireland there are numerous co-habiting couples, same-sex and opposite sex, whose human and civil rights to acknowledgment of their partnership are denied by the State's agencies and laws. Their numbers are growing annually (see Background). Activity is gathering pace aimed at ensuring sensible, reality-based legislation for the future.

There is no partnership recognition here which confers full equivalence to that of the ‘married' status for these couples and families. Cohabiting couples are treated as strangers in the eyes of the law – their property rights, tax status and medical records, for example, do not reflect their true life situation. For same-sex couples the discrimination runs deeper, where, critically, there is no option to change their status from ‘single' to ‘married'.

A legal mechanism to provide for a partnership status of full equivalence with marriage and the right to enter civil marriage by same-sex couples should be instituted by the State, to promote and protect the rights and responsibilities of all its citizen couples - same and opposite sex - in financial and familial issues.